1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, such as a digital camera, and an information processing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a great increase in the capacity of storage media for storing electronic data has been achieved, and the storage capacity is still rapidly increasing. Some new types of digital cameras have a large-capacity built-in storage medium that is not exchangeable. Such a type of digital camera is also called a medialess digital camera.
In a case where a user of a digital camera stores image data in a storage medium so that the image data can be played back whenever the user wants to do so, if the storage medium is of an exchangeable type, it is possible to store unlimitedly store image data by exchange the storage medium as required. However, in the case of medialess digital cameras, the storage medium disposed therein has an upper limit on the storage capacity no matter how large the storage capacity is, and thus it is necessary to delete some image data sooner or later.
The free space of a storage medium decreases to a low level if a large number of image data are stored therein. In such a situation, it is very troublesome to find, from a large number of image data, image data that is not necessary to be retained further and delete the found unnecessary image data.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-100971 discloses a technique to delete image data stored in a digital camera. In this technique, image data is deleted one by one taking into account information described in a print log. More specifically, storage priority information is added to image data on the basis of the print log, and deleting of image data is performed according to the storage priority information.
Although the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-100971 makes it easier to delete unnecessary image data from the storage medium, the technique has the following problems. First, when there is image data that a user wants to keep in the form of electronic data, there is a possibility that some or all of such image data that should be kept is deleted by mistake. Second, when a user wants to keep image data in a specific device, the desire of the user is not reflected in the storage priority information. That is, the desire of the user is not taken into account in the deletion of image data.